This invention pertains to use of the ANSI 41 standard to update the status of the message waiting notification count (MWNC) for a mobile telephone.
Mobile communications in the telephony industry comply with ANSI41 which is the industry standard for cellular radio communications intersystem operations. The ANSI41 standard is adopted and recognized by the American National Standards Institute and is published by the Telecommunications Industry Association/Electronics Industry Association TR-45.2 subcommittee, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
In the ANSI41 standard, a home location register (HLR) is a network node which maintains a profile for the mobile telephone of a subscriber. The profile includes information such as the account status and features of the mobile telephone of a subscriber. The ANSI41 standard defines an ANSI41 interface between the HLR and other nodes within the mobile communication network.
As seen in FIG. 1, an exemplary prior art network 10 defined by the ANSI41 standard includes a HLR 12, a mobile switch center (MSC) 14 which performs the mobile phone call processing, and a visited switch system (VLR)16 which receives profile updates from the HLR 12. The HLR12, the MSC 14 and the VLR 16 are nodes defined by the ANSI41 standard. Interfaces IA18 and IB20 are interfaces defined by the ANSI41 standard. Interface IA18 connects MSC 14 with HLR 12, and interface IB20 connects VLR 16 with HLR 12. Other nodes and interfaces, not shown, are used in accordance with the ANSI41 standard.
The HLR 12 provides an update to the VLR 16 for the mobile telephone 21. Information concerning the profile of the mobile telephone of the subscriber is transferred to the VLR 16 in accordance with the ANSI41 standard by a message such as the qualification directive message including a waiting notification count (MWNC) parameter. Information pertaining to the profile of the mobile telephone is transferred from the HLR 12 to the VLR 16 in accordance with the ANSI41 standard during a registration process.
Disadvantageously, in the existing practice of the ANSI41 standard no provision is made for providing an ANSI41 interface between a voice mail system (VMS) 22 and the HLR12. The status of MWNC in existing mobile telephone networks is provided, as shown in FIG. 1, by a dedicated connection 24, such as a dual tone multi frequency trunk (DTMF) with a proprietary interface (PI) 26 between the VMS 22 and the HLR 12. This arrangement involves the cost of establishing dedicated connections and proprietary interfaces. These proprietary interfaces prevent the ease of providing message waiting updates to the HLR 12 via an ANSI41 interface such as occurs when multiple vendors wish to launch updates to the HLR 12 for fax, voice and short messages, for example. Each voice mail system vendor in the prior art is required to establish its own propriety interface and connections between the VMS 22 and HLR 12.
Further, since the qualification directive can modify more than the MWNC of a subscriber's profile, it is not desirable to make the qualification directive available at a voice mail system. In fact, launching a message from VMS 22 to an HLR 12 is not permitted in current mobile telephony practice.
The present invention is directed to overcoming the affects of the problems set forth above.